The Garden of Allah eBook

of the sun. That was why her entry into the desert
had been full of such extraordinary significance.
This man and the desert were, had always been, as one
in her mind. Never had she thought of the one
without the other. Never had she been mysteriously
called by the desert without hearing as a far-off echo
the voice of Androvsky, or been drawn onward by the
mystical summons of the blue distances without being
drawn onward, too, by the mystical summons of the
heart to which her own responded. The link between
the man and the desert was indissoluble. She
could not conceive of its being severed, and as she
realised this, she realised also something that turned
her whole nature into flame.

She could not conceive of Androvsky’s not loving
her, of his not having loved her from the moment when
he saw her in the sun. To him, too, the desert
had made a revelation—­the revelation of
her face, and of the soul behind it looking through
it. In the flames of the sun, as they went into
the desert, the flames of their two spirits had been
blended. She knew that certainly and for ever.
Then how could it be possible that Androvsky should
not go out with her into the desert?

“Why did you speak to me?” he said.

“We came into the desert together,” she
answered simply. “We had to know each other.”

“And now—­now—­we have to
say——­”

His voice ceased. Far away there was the thin
sound of a chime. Domini had never before heard
the church bell in the garden, and now she felt as
if she heard it, not with her ears, but with her spirit.
As she heard she felt Androvsky’s hand, which
had been hot upon hers, turn cold. He let her
hand go, and again she was stricken by the horrible
sound she had heard the previous night in the desert,
when he turned his horse and rode away with her.
And now, as then, he turned away from her in silence,
but she knew that this time he was leaving her, that
this movement was his final good-bye. With his
head bowed down he took a few steps. He was near
to a turning of the path. She watched him, knowing
that within less than a moment she would be watching
only the trees and the sand. She gazed at the
bent figure, calling up all her faculties, crying
out to herself passionately, desperately, “Remember
it—­remember it as it is—­there—­before
you—­just as it is—­for ever.”
As it reached the turning, in the distance of the
garden rose the twitter of the flute of Larbi.
Androvsky stopped, stood still with his back turned
towards her. And Larbi, hidden and far off, showered
out his little notes of African love, of love in the
desert where the sun is everlasting, and the passion
of man is hot as the sun, where Liberty reigns, lifting
her cymbals that are as spheres of fire, and the footsteps
of Freedom are heard upon the sand, treading towards
the south.

Larbi played—­played on and on, untiring
as the love that blossomed with the world, but that
will not die when the world dies.